62 Interesting Facts About . . .

Wolves

In order for a new wolf cub to urinate, its mother has to massage its belly
with her warm tongue.e

The Vikings wore wolf skins and drank wolf blood to take on the wolf’s
spirit in battle. They also viewed real wolves as battle companions or hrægifr (corpse
trolls).f

The earliest drawings of wolves are in caves in southern Europe and date
from 20,000 B.C.b

Wolves do not make good guard dogs because they are naturally afraid of
the unfamiliar and will hide from visitors rather than bark at them.g

The autoimmune disease Systemic Lupus Erythmatosus (SLE), or lupus, literally
means wolf redness, because in the eighteenth century, physicians
believed the disease was caused by a wolf bite.f

Wolves are the largest members of the Canidae family, which includes domestic
dogs, coyotes, dingoes, African hunting dogs, many types of foxes, and several
kinds of jackals.a

Wolves run on their toes, which helps them to stop and turn quickly and
to prevent their paw pads from wearing down.e

Wolves have about 200 million scent cells. Humans have only about 5 million.
Wolves can smell other animals more than one mile (1.6 kilometers) away.b

A wolf pup’s eyes are blue at birth. Their eyes turn yellow by the
time they are eight months old.e

Wolves tend to mate for life

A male and female that mate usually stay together for life. They are devoted
parents and maintain sophisticated family ties.c

Wolf gestation is around 65 days. Wolf pups are born both deaf and blind
and weigh only one pound.d

Under certain conditions, wolves can hear as far as six miles away in the
forest and ten miles on the open tundra.a

Wolves were once the most widely distributed land predator the world
has ever seen. The only places they didn’t thrive were in the true
desert and rainforests.e

Among true wolves, two species are recognized: Canis lupus (often
known simply as “gray wolves”), which includes 38 subspecies,
such as the gray, timber, artic, tundra, lobos, and buffalo wolves. The other
recognized species is the red wolf (Canis rufus), which are smaller
and have longer legs and shorter fur than their relatives. Many scientists
debate whether Canis rufus is a separate species.e

Immense power is concentrated in a wolf’s jaw. It has a crushing
pressure of nearly 1,500 pound per square inch (compared with around 750
for a large dog). The jaws themselves are massive, bearing 42 teeth
specialized for stabbing, shearing, and crunching bones. Their jaws also
open farther than those of a dog.g

The North American gray wolf population in 1600 was 2 million. Today the
population in North America is approximately 65,000. The world population
is approximately 150,000.b

A hungry wolf can eat 20 pounds of meat in a single meal, which is
akin to a human eating one hundred hamburgers.b

A wolf pack may contain just two or three animals, or it may be 10 times
as large.e

Though many females in a pack are able to have pups, only a few will actually
mate and bear pups. Often, only the alpha female and male will mate, which
serves to produce the strongest cubs and helps limit the number of cubs the
pack must care for. The other females will help raise and “babysit” the
cubs.a

Lower-ranking males do not mate and often suffer from a condition of stress
and inhibition that has been referred to as “psychological castration.” Lower-ranking
females are sometimes so afraid of the alpha female that they do not even
go into heat.d

An average size wolf produces roughly 1.2 cubic inches of sperm.b

Wolves evolved from an ancient animal called Mesocyon, which lived
approximately 35 million years ago. It was a small dog-like creature with
short legs and a long body. Like the wolf, it may have lived in packs.g

Wolves can swim distances of up to 8 miles (13 kilometers) aided by small
webs between their toes.b

Between 1883 and 1918, more than 80,00 wolves were killed in Montana for
bounty.d

Adolph Hitler (whose first name means “lead wolf”) was fascinated
by wolves and sometimes used “Herr Wolf” or “Conductor
Wolf” as an alias. “Wolf’s Gulch” (Wolfsschlucht), “Wolf’s
Lair” (Wolfschanze), and “Werewolf” (Wehrwolf)
were Hitler’s code names for various military headquarters.f

In the 1600s, Ireland was called “Wolf-land” because it had
so many wolves. Wolf hunting was a popular sport among the nobility, who
used the Irish wolfhound to outrun and kill wolves. The earliest record of
an Irish wolfhound dates from Roman times in A.D. 391.f

Recent scientists suggest that labeling a wolf “alpha” or “omega” is
misleading because “alpha” wolves are simply parent wolves. Using “alpha” terminology
falsely suggests a rigidly forced permanent social structure.c

Although wolves are usually afraid of humans, they will respond to human howls

Biologists have found that wolves will respond to humans imitating their
howls. The International Wolf Center in Minnesota even sponsors “howl
nights” on which people can howl in the wilderness and hope for an
answering howl.b

Wolves have historically been associated with sexual predation. For example,
Little Red Riding Hood, who wears a red cape that proclaims her sexual maturity,
is seduced off the moral path by a wolf. The sex link endures in common clichés,
such as describing a predatory man as “a wolf” or a sexy whistle
as a “wolf whistle.”f

Biologists describe wolf territory as not just spatial, but spatial-temporal,
so that each pack moves in and out of each otherís turf depending on how
recently the “no trespassing” signals were posted.d

The Greek god Apollo is sometimes called Apollo Lykios, the wolf-Apollo,
and was associated with the wind and sun. In Athens, the land surrounding
the temple of Apollo became known as the Lyceum, or the “wolf skin.”f

In 1927, a French policeman was tried for the shooting of a boy he believed
was a werewolf. That same year, the last wild wolves in France were killed.f

When Europeans arrived in North America, wolves became the most widely
hunted animal in American history and were nearly extinct by the beginning
of the twentieth century. The U.S. Federal government even enacted a wolf
eradication program in the Western states in 1915.a

Dire wolves (canis dirus) were prehistoric wolves that lived in
North America about two million years ago. Now extinct, they hunted prey
as large as woolly mammoths.e

A wolf can run about 20 miles (32 km) per hour, and up to 40 miles (56
km) per hour when necessary, but only for a minute or two. They can “dog
trot” around 5 miles (8km) per hour and can travel all day at this
speed.g

The smallest wolves live in the Middle East, where they may weigh only
30 pounds. The largest wolves inhabit Canada, Alaska, and the Soviet Union,
where they can reach 175 pounds.e

Wolves howl to contact separated members of their group, to rally the group
before hunting, or to warn rival wolf packs to keep away. Lone wolves will
howl to attract mates or just because they are alone. Each wolf howls for
only about five seconds, but howls can seem much longer when the entire pack
joins in.c

A light-reflecting layer on a wolf’s eye called the tapetum lucidum (Latin
for “bright tapestry”) causes a wolf’s eyes to glow in
the dark and may also facilitate night vision. While a wolf’s color
perception and visual acuity maybe be inferior to a human’s, a wolf’s
eyes are extremely sensitive to movement.d

Ravens, or “wolf-birds,” seem to form social attachments with wolves

Where there are wolves, there are often ravens (sometimes known as “wolf-birds”).
Ravens often follow wolves to grab leftovers from the hunt—and to tease
the wolves. They play with the wolves by diving at them and then speeding
away or pecking their tails to try to get the wolves to chase them.g

In ancient Rome, barren women attended the Roman festival Lupercalia (named
for the legendary nursery cave of Romulus and Remus) in the hopes of becoming
fertile.f

According to Pliny the Elder, a first-century Roman scholar, wolf teeth
could be rubbed on the gums of infants to ease the pain of teething. He also
reported that wolf dung could be used to treat both colic and cataracts.f

The Aztecs used wolf liver as an ingredient for treating melancholy. They
also pricked a patient’s breast with a sharpened wolf bone in an attempt
to delay death.f

During the Middle Ages, Europeans used powdered wolf liver to ease the
pain of childbirth and would tie a wolf’s right front paw around a
sore throat to reduce the swelling. Dried wolf meat was also eaten as a remedy
for sore shins.f

The Greeks believed that if someone ate meat from a wolf-killed lamb, he
or she ran a high risk of becoming a vampire.f

During the reign of Edward the Confessor, which began in 1042, a condemned
criminal was forced to wear a wolf-head mask and could be executed on a “wolf’s
head tree” or the gallows where a wolf might be hanged next to him.f

Werewolf (wer “man” + wulf “wolf”)
trials (which can be distinguished from witchcraft trials) led to hundreds
of executions during the 1600s. Men, women, and children—many of whom
were physically and mentally handicapped—were put to death.f

The Cherokee Indians did not hunt wolves because they believed a slain
wolves’ brothers would exact revenge. Furthermore, if a weapon
were used to kill a wolf, the weapon would not work correctly again.f

In approximately the year 800, Charlemagne founded a special wolf-hunting
force, the Louveterie, which remained active until 1789. It was
reactivated in1814, and the last French wolf was killed in 1927.a

Britain’s King Edgar imposed an annual tax of 300 wolf skins on Wales.
The Welsh wolf population was quickly exterminated.a

In 1500, the last wolf was killed in England. In 1770, Ireland’s
last wolf was killed. In 1772, Denmark’s last wolf was killed.a

After hearing of “frightening spirits” in the woods
with human features that walked on four legs, Reverend Singh in 1920 discovered
a den with two cubs and two human girls, one around age 7 or 8, the other
around 2. After being brought back to “civilization,” the younger
one died within a year. Recently, authors have questioned the validity of
this story as modern knowledge has revealed that wolf-like behavior is often
seen in autistic or abused children.d

Sextus Placitus, in his fifth-century B.C. Medicina de quadrupedibus (Medicinals
from Animals), claims that sleeping with a wolf’s head under
one’s pillow would cure insomnia.f

In 1934, Germany became the first nation in modern times to place the wolf
under protection. Influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844-1900) and
Oswald Spengler’s (1880-1936) belief that natural predators possessed
more vigor and virility than their prey, the protection was probably more
for an “iconic” wolf than the actual wolf, particularly
since the last wolves in Germany were killed in the middle of the nineteenth
century.f

Wolves are one of the few animals that communicate using a great range of facial expressions

Unlike other animals, wolves have a variety of distinctive facial expressions
they use to communicate and maintain pack unity.c

The Japanese word for wolf means “great god.”f

Between 6,000 and 7,000 wolf skins are still traded across the world each
year. The skins are supplied mainly by Russia, Mongolia, and China and are used mainly for coats.a

In India, simple wolf traps are still used. These traps consist of a simple
pit, disguised with branches or leaves. The wolves fall in and people then
stone them to death.a

Wolves were the first animals to be placed on the U.S. Endangered Species
Act list in 1973.a

John Milton’s famous poem “Lycidas” derives its title
from the Greek for “wolf cub,” lykideus.f

In the Harry
Potter universe, werewolf Remus Lupin’s name is directly
related to the Latin word for wolf (lupus) and suggests an association
with one of the founders of Rome, Remus, who was suckled by a wolf. The dual
nature of Lupin’s werewolf nature suggests that in the Potter realm,
there are two sides to everything.f

The last wolf in Yellowstone Park was killed in 1926. In 1995, wolves were
reintroduced and, after just ten years, approximately 136 wolves now roam
the Park in about 13 wolf packs.b

Currently, there are about 50,000 wolves in Canada; 6,500 in Alaska; and
3,500 in the Lower 48 States. In Europe, Italy has fewer than 300; Spain
around 2,000; and Norway and Sweden combined have fewer than 80. There are
about 700 wolves in Poland and 70,000 in Russia.b